


that sunshine through a window feeling

by Ros3mary



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Bad Pick-Up Lines, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26613403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ros3mary/pseuds/Ros3mary
Summary: Clay discovers flirting in Minecraft is harder than it seems, especially when you can't seem to do it without blushing, stammering, and otherwise being a fool. George learns that Clay is an oblivious idiot. In the end, they both learn how to communicate.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 912





	that sunshine through a window feeling

**Author's Note:**

> I support flustered!dream rights
> 
> not happy with how this turned out but its been in my google docs just sitting there for months so I am officially making it Not My Problem anymore

_i'm gonna stream, u down?_

Sleep was sticky against Clay’s pale eyelashes as he batted his eyes open blearily, squinting at his screen to discern what had woken him up. The dark blue tones blurred underneath his drowsy state, and he struggled to understand what words meant. With a grimace, Clay pressed his palms into the wood of his desk and pushed himself up from where he had been slumped awkwardly over his keyboard. He paused briefly to eye the remains of dried drool critically, then looked up at his screen again.

He didn’t even remember falling asleep, his last motes of consciousness swimming in his head like dust through sunlight, hazy as he recalled squinting at a pixelated world at around six in the morning. Whenever it had happened, it was just nearly five in the evening now. Clay dragged a hand up his face and through his hair, wincing at the lingering bad taste in his mouth and the faint headache collecting in the corners of his head like cobwebs. He felt like a corpse. He’d never been good at all-nighters, and all-nighters with a goal and a deadline were even worse. 

Sniffling softly in an absent way, Clay read the message again. “Streaming?” He murmured into the emptiness of his room. His fingers flew over the well-worn keys of his keyboard as he typed out a response.

_what, now?_   
  


The span of a long, solitary moment passed, and Clay allowed it, awaiting a response, but there was no reply. His tired eyes flicked up towards the first message, sweeping over the time it had been sent, and his nose wrinkled guiltily when he realized he was twenty minutes too late. 

“Oops,” He muttered, scratching the back of his head and feeling how the messy desk-head he’d acquired shifted under his fingertips.

Clay clicked out of Discord and opened his bookmark for George’s twitch. George was already streaming. He considered joining the voice channel that George was probably in, on their server, but then just joined the stream as a viewer, content to watch without pitching anything in. Besides, if he was going to string together enough coherent thoughts to talk to somebody so soon after waking, he’d need to get up and either swish mouthwash or chug water and he didn’t feel like moving just yet. 

George was already in the middle of talking when the stream loaded, after Clay sat through a short advertisement that had his eyelids fluttering. “-for donating.” The burst of George’s voice through his headphones made Clay shift in his seat, blinking as he reacquainted himself with paying attention. “‘Was that your discord or mine?’ Oh, did I get a- hold on.” 

Clay smiled softly, setting his cheek in his palm as he watched. George had his face cam on, afternoon light making him soft in a pink hoodie from somewhere off screen, and he was looking to the side as he read the donation.

“It was me, sorry. From Dream. God, he’s so annoying.” George said, but the way he was smiling didn’t agree with his words. A mirroring smile stretched across Clay’s face at the sight, and he bit the inside of his lip to restrain it, but it bubbled out, unrestrained, curling around his lips like flower blossoms.

_yes!! ur too late now, muffin_

Clay got the notification at the same time that George started talking again, saying something to his chat that Clay didn’t pay much attention to. Clay laughed, green eyes crinkling kindly in the corners with the sound. “Muffin?” He asked no one in particular, and then he sent that, fingers twitching over the soft lights of his keys.

_Muffin??_   
_You need to stop talking to bad so much_

He waited a minute or two, kind of almost listening to the stream, but he didn’t get a response to that one. Finally, Clay just minimized Discord entirely and started watching George in earnest, folding his arms on his desk and putting his head on them. He had to tilt his neck awkwardly to see George from this position, but he was tired enough to want to lay down, and it was worth it, anyways, when George laughed at something from his chat and his eyes lit up, thin lips breaking into a smile.

The soft sounds of Minecraft accompanied George talking, woody noises from his character’s feet hitting planks as he hopped around the farm, talking to his chat and Nick and sort of absently moving in the way Minecraft Youtubers and streamers did. He wrapped up thanking somebody for a donation, finally, after a palmful of minutes of just talking, and said loudly, “What am I even doing? I’ve been streaming for twenty minutes and I haven’t done anything.”

George shook his head at himself, shoulders shifting under the fabric of his hoodie as he changed his sitting position. His character started sprinting for the house’s doors. “I need to go mining, since we ran out of diamonds last stream. It would be _helpful_ if _Dream_ were here, but someone wasn’t answering my messages.”

“I could help you mine,” Nick said in the background. George paid no attention to it, and it made Clay snicker a little when Nick made an indignant sort of grumble that George also ignored.

“I need to get wood, and torches, and maybe food? Sapnap, where did you put all those pork chops we got?”

“In the smoker, dude, chill.”

George’s character ran at the furnaces, but then stopped, and Clay blinked in surprise at his own character’s skin and name tag, standing still in front of the stairs and just staring at a far wall.

“What the hell? How long has Dream been on,” George said, laughter tickling around the edges of the words. 

“Dream’s not on,” Nick said back. The player list appeared briefly as George tabbed it, displaying that Clay was, in fact, on.

“Yeah, he is, he's right here. Hello, Dream,” George said sing-song, drawing out the vowels of the two words as if they were playing manhunt. He smacked Clay’s character a few times, green flashing red, and then Nick ran up from the side and attacked Clay’s stationary character, too. “I guess he just forgot to log out.” George said, and he wrinkled his nose in the corner of the screen. “He’s so stupid.” He added as an afterthought. 

“He’s not even here to defend himself,” Nick protested mildly, currently working on trying to push Clay out of the house. “Let him live.”

Clay minimized Twitch, and a couple other open tabs he’d also forgotten to close, and Minecraft was one of the last ones up and running. He really had forgotten to close it. He looked around at Nick and George, smacking Nick away from where he was still pushing Clay towards the house’s doors.

An instant later, Clay quickly logged himself out, and the sound of the other two’s laughter bounced out of his speakers. George’s reedy giggles stuck out to Clay, and he jerkily opened Twitch, in time to see the grin across George’s face fading in tune with the trailing off laughs.

“He’s gone! He just left.” George said. Again, George was jumping around idly, this time chips flying under his feet from the planks of the house’s floor. “Whatever, I have stuff to do. I need to get...”

As he began to walk towards their makeshift storage, a chest monster in disguise, really, George trailed off, finally noticing the chest in the corner of the large house that proudly read GEORGE ONLY on a sign pinned to it.

“What?” George said, looking a little suspicious and dumbfounded. The familiar chest opening sound played as he accessed the chest. 

The fruits of Clay’s labor and all nighter lay inside. Six whole blocks of diamonds, and then some odd number of diamonds scattered in it. Three pieces of paper sat in the very center.

“‘If I had a diamond for every time’” George read, his mouse hovering over the first page. It drifted to the second page, and he read it in silence. _'you made me smile, I'd be the'_. And finally, over to the last page. ' _richest Minecrafter alive_ '.

George laughed, just a little nervously, smiling in a kind of dumbfounded way. “Sapnap, did you-?” He asked, but he cut himself off.

“Did I what?” Nick prompted. George shook his head.

“Nothing, nevermind.” George must have muted himself to Nick then, because he looked at the camera, then down at the screen again, and said, “This is ridiculous.” A huge grin was overtaking his face, brown eyes bright and happy with it. 

Clay turned his nose into the soft fabric of his hoodie’s arms, butterfly wings tickling the walls of his chest and stomach. His eyes wavered over the chat, which was all various shades of his name being yelled. 

“You guys think it was Dream?” George asked. He put his chin in his hand as if he were thinking about it. “Maybe. I dunno.” He was silent for a second, then added, “Actually, it was probably Dream.”

The chat started yelling ‘simp’ instead.

Clay laughed to himself, but it was kind of a frazzled, flustered laugh. 

He had spent all night mining for the diamonds because George had kept complaining about their lack of the blue pixels. While Clay had been putting them in a chest, he had added the pick up line, too. It was stupid. Clay was just impusilve, not used to denying himself what he wanted to do. There was a window on his chest, and afternoon light slanted through into his heart, dripping honey and gold off his ribs, painting his heart in bright colors and making him feel so warm. Some days, he couldn’t help how it spilled over. He knew what it meant- he understood the warning signs of a too-wide smile and a pink, flushed face when George laughed particularly prettily- and he was struggling to ignore it. 

This way, if George reacted badly, it could be played off as a joke.

“Well, I guess I don’t need to go mining anymore...” George said to the chat, and the rest of the stream went pretty normally for a lazy afternoon day without Clay. Still, Clay didn’t stop feeling like he was buzzing out of his skin with glee the entire time.

Clay groaned, again, as the block he was mining turned into a pumpkin. “George, I told you not to go on that block-,”

“There’s a witch over here!” Came back George’s gleeful response, ignoring Clay completely.

With a sigh, Clay watched idly as George’s character sprinted towards a shadowed cave, the grass under his feet shifting into a rainbow of colors and an explosion of shapes as he touched it. Today’s challenge made blocks change randomly, but only when George or Clay walked on them, and Clay already felt over it with a capital “O” ten minutes in. 

Maybe it would be better if George didn’t keep purposefully sprinting on the blocks he was trying to mine. George was in an impishly playful mood today, and it was annoying Clay a little. Usually, it was the other way around, and Clay was still tired from how he’d majorly disrupted his sleep schedule. Too tired to start messing with George as they set up recording, something that George had picked up and capitalized on.

After Clay got a couple blocks of iron, which also included him running around randomly trying to get more to spawn and actually took an irritatingly long time, he set out to find George again. “Where did you go? Did the witch kill you?” He teased, running up a hill that burned with a trail of random blocks. At least they couldn’t lose each other with this plugin.

“I was looking for an anvil,” George said, and his character bounced up to Clay’s out of a pale birch wood, still naked, holding a wooden sword.

“What? Why?” Clay asked, baffled.

George said, “It doesn’t matter.” His character’s arm jerked, and a shiny pink color flashed at Clay from his screen as George tossed an item at him.

Clay picked up a potion of health, sitting innocently in his hotbar, and he looked at it with surprise. “Where’d you get this?” He asked, almost suspiciously, scrolling over so he was holding it. 

“The witch dropped it. It’s for you.” George said simply, already running off towards some tall birch trees. 

Genuinely surprised, and touched though he wouldn’t admit it, Clay opened his inventory and hovered his mouse over the pink bottle. He thought about how often George’s health got down, and he asked, “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

“I’m fine.” George said, all casual-like, as if Clay’s blood wasn’t singing out of his skin. Usually Clay was the one giving gifts. 

“What if-,”

“My heart’s already been full,” George said nonchalantly, “ever since I met you.”

Clay’s mouth popped open with an audible click, gaping like a fish at his monitor. In the resulting silence, George giggled prettily. The warmth in Clay’s chest blazed, like a whole summer afternoon was nestled in his chest cavity. He basked in it the way a cat sitting on a windowsill would.

“Y-yeah, okay.” Clay said, only stuttering a little bit. 

Instead of continuing to play the game, Clay put his face in his hands, hating a little how obvious it was from just two words that he was blushing like a flustered idiot. He didn’t _get_ flustered. That was George’s job. 

“Are you playing or what?” George said after a few long moments, and Clay jumped a little. 

“I’m playing,” He said, defensive, as he clicked out of his inventory and started moving around again, looking for a cave. 

The health potion stayed in his hotbar, but Clay didn’t use it, not even after he got down to half a heart in the nether or when they ended up dying to a hoard of zombies in the stronghold.

“Wait, wait, we can talk about this!” 

“Talk to my sword!” 

Clay laughed wildly, with an edge of game-induced adrenaline, and ducked his character into the tall stalks of bamboo around the lake. George’s footsteps thundered over the oak bridge as he gave chase, conceding his defensive position from the pile of Clay’s inventory. 

“I’ll take you to court,” Clay warned, followed by a breathless wheeze when he saw George’s character crash into the bamboo behind him.

“We already did that bit,” George said, and Clay let out a short, punctuated yell as he went down a bunch of hearts, George’s diamond sword knocking down his health and a couple of bamboo stalks that rained around them and scattered into the water.

Clay dove into the lake after the green stalks, swimming through the coral and under the house to get away. He heard the splash as George followed from his own audio and George’s stream, up on his second monitor. 

George yelled out a frustrated “No!” when Clay scooped up all his stuff, frantic clicks making his lime skin vanish under silver plate.

A smack of George’s sword brought Clay down to a heart and a half, and he squealed with laughter as he danced away, leading George towards the parkour tower that they usually ended up in when they started dealing damage and death messages. 

Except, Clay placed a single block of TNT behind him as he stepped onto the pressure plate that opened the door, then ducked into the tower just in time to shield himself from the blast. George’s scream pierced his ears, making Clay wince but also laugh loudly, and his death message popped up in chat not far behind. 

“Dream!” George yelled, affronted. “Where did you get TNT!”

“Here and there,” Clay said casually. In truth, that TNT had not been in his inventory to actually kill George, but this worked too. He turned to the hole where the door had been, eyeing the twirling pile of George’s stuff, sunk into an earthy crater. 

“Don’t touch my stuff,” George warned. 

Clay added a single slip of paper to the pile. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” He said, going back into the tower and jumping up the parkour. George was better at it than him, but Clay still got up onto the platform in time to see George sprint to a halt, dipping into the crater to pick up his stuff.

Silence spun like silk from George’s end, and Clay turned his eyes to his second monitor, watching George’s perspective from his stream. 

George’s mouse hovered angelicly over the paper, allowing the custom words to show themselves, reading in silence and with an expression Clay couldn’t quite parse. 

' _You're just like TNT- you blow me away'._

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” George finally said. A fond smile curled around his lips from the corner of the stream, breaking like daylight into a comprehensible emotion.

Clay let out a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, ducking behind a pillar shyly when George’s character looked up towards him.

“I know,” Clay said, trying and failing to be casual about it. Advantage of not having a facecam- nobody can see you blushing, or smiling like a lovestruck fool. His chat lit up with delighted messages and, most likely, pogchamps, but Clay only had eyes for George. Despite the fact that George was putting on his armor again and aiming a bow at Clay’s character.

“George, come on, let’s go already!”

Stone crunched under iron boots as Clay bounced over the jagged terrain of a cave, his crosshairs placed firmly over George, watching him open and close the long line of furnaces they’d placed repeatedly. More than half of them were already dark.

“Wait, wait!” George yelled back, laughter crackling around the words like flames wisping over the sides of a fireplace’s wood.

Clay whined wordlessly, minging indignant and impatient noises down the Discord call at George. He smacked George with his iron sword once, smiling in private at the squawk that George let out.

George picked up all the furnaces, finally. He stood still for a moment, probably arranging his inventory, then ran over to Clay and set a torch down at the green character’s feet. “Is that you?”

“What?” Clay’s voice laced with annoyed impatience, and he barely spared a glance down at the flickering fire. “Is what me? The torch?”

“Yeah, is that you?”

“George, why would I be a torch? And I’m standing right-,”

“‘Cause you light up my world, duh.”

Clay’s voice fizzled on his tongue like pop rocks and clogged in his throat, an embarrassingly soft sound of confusion wrenching out of his closed lips. George laughed loudly, and Clay smacked him with a sword again, a little defensive and a little sore.

“Dream!” George yelled. “I’m on half a heart, stop, don’t hit me!”

Clay forced out a signature wheeze, saying, “Okay, calm down. Let’s go already.” His heart was beating in his throat. It took every ounce of willpower to sound calm and confident.

It took a special kind of determination to not read the comments on that video. Clay was sure they’d all read the same timestamp anyways.

Pale brilliance arced against the dark of Clay’s room, spilling out from the upturned screen of his phone without warning. He flinched, just a little, turning towards the screen with tired eyes ringed with sleeplessness. 

It was way too late at night, and he’d done way too much editing for too long. His eyes carried baggage heavy enough to load down a plane. Unfortunately, this was a common occurrence; common enough that you’d think Clay would have the common sense to start dimming his phone at night for when he inevitably attacked himself with the force of the sun trying to set his alarms. 

Still, Clay swiped the phone off the edge of his desk, smiling in the corners of his mouth as he read the notification. He opened it up, and Twitter’s blue screen and white bird shone bright enough to make him wince, again. The keyboard-calloused pad of his thumb swiped at the screen, pulling up the settings display. He turned down his brightness a little, and while that screen was still down, the tweet loaded and his own voice bounced out of the speakers at him.

“ _George, stop it already!_ ”

Familiar peels of laughter, bordering on giggles, followed.

Clay remembered recording this, though the exact date was fuzzy; a week ago, maybe. An hour into a video that was supposed to be a health link challenge (just like the one he’d done with Nick, really), and a million deaths making the chat white, George and Clay were still struggling to even get to the Nether. 

They’d found a village, but George, again in that infuriating, heart-stopping playful mood, had kept breaking Clay’s bed when he lay in it.

“ _Dre~am,_ ” George had said, and Clay watched again as George’s fist knocked out the yellow bed from underneath Clay’s character. 

“ _George_!”

In the video, Clay smacked George a couple times, making his own hearts dip dangerously low too, and the clip ended with them both laughing. Clay’s husky wheezes made his nose crinkle, now, but George’s laughter never failed to make him want to melt into a puddle of affection. 

The short video was captioned simply, _video tomorrow_. Clay’s thumb accidentally swiped into the reply button while going towards the replies, and the keyboard popped up, innocently prompting him to type out his message. 

The gaming chair squeaked as Clay reclined, his fingertips drumming a rhythmless mantra on the armrest idly. He chewed his lower lip into his mouth, then leaned forward again, his hands framing the screen as he typed out a message. 

_can I put my bed next to yours_ , he wrote, and that emoji with the puppy dog eyes. Before he could chicken out, he sent it, and then gnawed at the tip of a pointer finger, nervous. He was so stupid. It would really take a miracle for George to even consider even thinking about slightly considering dating Clay. 

Sent into a red-faced dizzy spell from the thought (of _dating George_ ), Clay forced himself to put the phone down and go back to the video he was trying to edit. 

Hours later, he picked up his phone again to check his alarms, having forgotten about his tweet altogether. George’s reply was highlighted in his notification board, and Clay tilted his head doggy-style, clicking into the app. His drowsy green eyes washed over the original tweet and his response, and recollection clicked into his brain, albeit a bit slowly, thanks to his sleeplessness. Clay’s gaze dipped down to George’s reply.

 _why even bother with two beds?_ George had said. 

Clay whisper-screamed into his hand, bending over at the middle as if in mourning, hot breath puffing into his palm as he softly shouted into his own cupped fingertips. “He’s gonna kill me,” Clay muttered to himself, burying his face into his desk. The cool surface was a relief against his suddenly hot face.

In the end, he didn’t even end up responding to that one. Even thinking about George’s tweet made his heart feel like it was playing him a drum solo in his chest, no matter how many times he told himself it was all for the bit. 

The timer in the corner of Clay’s screen tipped over to twenty-five minutes, and he groaned. “I’m literally no closer to beating the stupid game than when I started,” He said, quickly clicking out of the world and creating a new one with rehearsed muscle memory, not even stopping to name it, as usual.

For the fifth time that stream alone, he’d been given a shit seed that Clay had kept insisting he could salvage. The new zeroes mocked him as he restarted the timer, again, the new world spilling into existence on the screen.

George giggled a little through his headphones, and Clay’s lips twitched in the corners, fingers adjusting over the mouse. The pale, sun-washed promise of a desert rendered all around Clay’s character. Though the desert was arguably the most boring biome, it was endlessly better than the last three island spawns that Minecraft had vomited onto him. Clay instantly started moving, going into third person and then flitting nymphly towards the promise of an orange and red wooded village. “You suck at this,” George told him down the voice chat. 

“That’s not what your mom said last night,” Clay fired out before he could help himself. George laughed some more but said nothing. The chat started skipping with speed on his second monitor, and Clay flushed a little, embarrassed. What a juvenile response. Maybe George really was converting Clay into nothing but a little kid with a crush. 

The acacia village didn’t have a blacksmith, but the golem dropped five bars of iron, and Clay found a bucket, a saddle, and enough wheat to last him a speedrun and a half around the village. Then, less than a second after he left the village, his eyes caught on the vague shape of a desert temple in the distance, and he sprinted towards it without hesitation. He smiled faintly at his turn of luck, just the edges of his mouth curling into it. 

Clay routinely went through the temple chests, snagging anything of interest into his inventory without much thought, but the process stuttered when his mouse hovered over a shining purple book labelled Looting III. He clicked it into his inventory, smiling in earnest now.

Before he could say anything about it, George chuckled lowly in his headphones, accompanied by a tell-tale background rustle that promised he was shifting around in his seat. “Oh, this is the run, then,” George said. He sounded completely confident. “I mean, you could’ve done it easily before, but now it’s, like, guaranteed.”

“I have to get iron,” Clay said, staring at the book as if it could tell him why his heartbeat fizzed in his ears at George’s easy conviction.

“You’ve done it before,” George pointed out, and Clay relented, the corner of his eyes crinkling in a smile. The floodgates opened up in his chest, warmth tumbling into every cobwebbed corner and sinking down into his skin. It sure didn’t feel like a silly childhood crush; it felt like everything.

Wordlessly, only for the fact that he didn’t trust himself to speak, Clay dug out of the temple and set off searching for a cave. He got a third of the iron he needed just out of a large system of surface caves, but pretty soon he had to switch a torch into his off-hand and delve down into the cavities wreathed with darkness. He ran into no less than two dead-ends, but finally got into a seemingly good cave, sprinting bravely into an imposing series of cisterns and tunnels with nothing but a stone sword and a torch. It was easy work, and it was all done in relative silence.

“Hey, Dream.” George said; the sudden voice out of nowhere made Clay jump a little. He’d been starting to think George had fallen asleep, which had happened before, with how quiet he’d been. Before Clay could get a word in, George continued, “Did I mention you’re looking opti- _fine_ tonight?”

Clay startled again, his fingertips lifting off the keyboard without his permission. For a moment, he was confused, but then he looked at the torchlight washing over stone walls and understood. “Oh, fuck off,” He said automatically after it clicked. George spiraled into laughter, and Clay did, too, stammering to say, “I mean heck off! I said ‘heck off’.”

“Dream!” George scolded, giggling too hard himself to set a good example. 

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Clay said, putting his face in his hands. He’d been caught off guard and flustered, obviously, and had tried to deflect instinctively. “I meant to say…” His voice trailed off, finding he had no idea what he would have said, or what he would say now.

George sobered a little, voice clear as he said, “Say what, Dream?”

“I meant to say, uhm..” Clay’s green eyes darted around the cave. Speckles of ashy gray particles dripped down from the ceiling, and Clay turned his character up towards it, looking at the fragile roof of gravel. “I meant to say you must be a hacker, b-because you hacked my heart.” 

His effort was rewarded with the bell-like sound of George’s laughter, back again in full. Clay huffed out a soft breath of almost-relief that went unnoticed under George’s giggles. His cheeks were flaming red, and his thoughts kept circling back to how he’d stuttered, how his breath had catched at George’s dumb line, how uncertain he’d sounded. The confused race of his heart in his chest, edged with a spiked anxiety, reminded him why he’d decided to write all his lines months ago, when this whole thing had started. 

But, despite all of that, Clay still found himself smiling widely, rosy cheeks dimpled kindly with it, his face stretching and burning in a tell-tale way. The amused little huffs that George breathed down the voice channel almost made it worth it. The sunshine spilling from the crown of his head to his eyes, squinted with his smile; the warmth painting down to his fingertips that raced over his keyboard; the affection that spiraled down his spine and all the way his toes that curled into his carpet, those definitely made it worth it.

“So, what do you wanna do today?”

Summer sunlight dripped like honey through Clay’s window, gauzy and dream-like through his pale curtains, filling his bedroom with that drowsy, sweet summer haze. He decided quickly that no editing or recording would be done today, not with how the sun’s warmth curled around his feet and danced around his head like fog.

“Let’s just play,” He said vaguely. The edges of his pfp lit up green with the words, voice crackling down the mic. 

“Not for a video?” George asked, and Clay shook his head at his computer screen, despite the fact that only he saw the movement. 

“We don’t need to yet,” Clay said. “We’re set for a couple days.”

He heard George’s keys clicking, chair squeaking as if the other was sitting up. “Okay. Let’s do the assassin plugin. That one was fun.”

Clay agreed, because George couldn’t say very much that he would disagree with. 

“Wait. Let’s bet on it.” George added, starting to take on that subtle edge of hesitant eagerness, and Clay took a wary second to himself, deciding whether or not to rescind his last thought.

In the end, his simp side wore out. “Bet what?”

“If you win, you can tweet from my twitter,” George said, and then he said, “And if I win… you’ll face reveal. To me.”

Clay’s heart sank a little. 

By all means, Clay knew he really should have face revealed to George by now. He didn’t really know how to describe what held him back. It’s not like he was camera shy, or that he didn’t trust George. The thought just made his heart do tap-dances, inexplicably scary in a way that made Clay shy away like some skittish wild animal. 

“What do you say?” George prompted when Clay was silent for too long. If Clay wasn’t projecting, George sounded just as nervous as Clay felt.

“Sure, fine,” Clay said, all faux-nonchalance. “I agree to those terms.” Tweeting from George’s twitter was almost a fair trade-off, too, in Clay’s opinion.

George cheered a little, probably pumping his fist in the air like a nerd. “I’m so gonna win. What do you wanna be?”

It ended up with George speedrunning and Clay hunting. The first few minutes were standard cat and mouse, the familiar red particles appearing to hold Clay in place when George’s character looked at him. 

After the initial chase ended with George getting away, Clay dove down into a ravine to get some iron. He scrolled over and clicked the compass, which spun around to track George, and then paused, thinking. 

Rather than actually prepare and get iron armor or tools, Clay spent the next ten minutes getting an anvil, and then paper. 

After he typed out his message onto the slip, Clay climbed his way out of the ravine and set off to finally track down George. In the time Clay had spent getting the anvil, and a sword and chestplate, George had scampered off pretty far. 

Eventually, Clay found George plucking his way through a plains biome, idly slicing through the miscellaneous mobs around. Clay opened his inventory and hovered his mouse over the paper, considering. 

' _My compass always points to you <3_'

It had taken him most of the game to get the anvil for it, so not giving it would be a waste. Yet. 

Clay crept out of the trees, holding his breath as if he were a second grader passing a note to his crush. To be fair, the only incorrect thing in that simile was the ‘second grader’ part. 

Feet crunched grass as he ran towards George, forming a half-baked plan to toss the paper and then run away before any confrontation could happen. Before Clay could even get the first step of his plan out, lightning quick, George whipped his character around. Clay heard his friend’s mouse jerking over his mousepad with the force of it.

“Dream!” George said. He smacked Clay once with his sword, and then just stared at him, the flickering red particles holding Clay suspended mid-step, helpless. 

“Wait wait don't kill me!” Clay shouted, throwing his hands up in surrender as if George could see him. 

“You were _stalking_ me,” George said, sounding delighted. 

“I wasn’t- I was just looking- I have something for you,” Clay stammered out, putting his hands back on the keyboard to open up his keyboard.

George laughed, and said, “How did you find me?”

“I have a compass, stupid.” Clay rolled his eyes. George couldn’t see the irritated expression, but his flat tone of voice gave it away just as well.

“Oh, yeah,” George giggled the words out. “What do you want?”

Wordlessly, Clay opened his inventory and tossed the paper at George. He saw George pick it up, then scroll over so that the simple white paper was in his hand. 

George was silent for long enough that Clay’s skin started to itch, butterflies rolling in his stomach like the tide. Clay’s heart was a bird’s wings, thrashing in his chest, and his thoughts were a mantra of _fuckshitfuckshitfuckshit._

“Let me go,” Clay said, jerking his mouse around so his character thrashed, immobile. “I won’t fight you, I promise!”

Control jolted back into his keyboard as George looked away. Without hesitation, Clay turned and sprinted back for the trees, his finger indenting the shift button as he crouched, hiding. He held his breath once more, not even peeking out at George’s character.

“You’re so dumb,” George said. Clay could have been punched, for how it hit him. He’d never heard George’s voice that _soft_ before. “I’m still gonna win.”

“Okay, sure,” Clay said. He waited another couple seconds and then poked his head around the oak logs. George was gone.

Clay ran back to where they’d been standing and then stalled, his fingers freezing over the keys. George was nowhere to be seen, but a single rosebush was twirling atop the grass. He stepped forward and picked it up. 

There weren’t any rosebushes in this area, from what he could see. In fact, the only ones he remembered seeing were at spawn, ages ago. Clay could swear he felt his heart melt inside his chest, dripping down his ribcage, sticky like honey. 

“Thank you, George.” He murmured, putting the rosebush safely in the corner of his inventory. 

A beat of silence passed, and then George said, just as quiet, “You’re welcome, Clay.”

Clay could have fainted for how quickly his face went red, flushing up to his hairline. _This is so stupid, he only said your name, you hear it every day,_ Clay thought, but he couldn’t hold back the tsunami of affection it flooded him with. The happy blaze in his chest burned into an inferno, as if Clay were standing in front of an open oven, the sweet smell of cookies and the hearth’s warmth curling around him, all comfort.

The air of competition returned after that, the two yelling and screaming at each other, but laughing just as much. Clay started to feel that tunnel-vision focus as he played, his competitive nature making him wriggle in his seat. 

Similar to one of the 3v1 manhunt videos, it ended with Clay killing George at the same time George killed the dragon. The chat read, in clear print, that George had gotten the achievement before he died. 

George’s cheerful screams pierced Clay’s ears, ringing out of his headphones. “Let’s go!” George yelled. 

Clay was quiet, weighing his options in the mental scale of his brain. He’d have to hold up his half of the bet now. Honestly, he didn’t have an answer for not showing George his face yet- it probably _was_ just shyness.

“Are you sulking?” George asked mirthfully, after a couple moments of his cheers meeting no reaction.

“No,” Clay said, a little defensive. He minimized Minecraft and stared at Discord’s tab, chewing his lip. Finally, he drifted his mouse over and turned the voice call into a video chat. 

The couple seconds it took George to answer had nerves swimming in Clay’s stomach. Finally, Discord let out a happy little ding, and George’s face filled up most of his screen; his own image resting in the corner. 

“That’s you?” George asked. He was leaning forward with his chin in his palm, fingers curled against his lower lip. His brown eyes were bright with something Clay couldn’t quite define, his head tilted like a dog. A sort of disbelieving smile was painted across his face. 

“Yeah, duh,” Clay said. His forest colored eyes flicked up towards his webcam, a non expensive thing, since he hardly ever used it, and then down towards his image. 

He probably should have at least tried to brush his hair beforehand, in hindsight. His blonde hair stuck up every which way like a bird’s nest, something he’d nearly given up on taming ages ago. 

“Hmm.” George hummed cheekily, lips curling into a more concrete smile. “Cute,” He finally said, and Clay faced the abject horror of watching his own tan, freckled face light up red like a beacon. George laughed, delighted, and went on to say, “How often do you blush like that?”

“Never, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clay muttered, sullen, as he hid his eyes behind his hand. 

George scoffed. “That’s so unfair. Everyone always says I’m blushing when I’m not, if only they could see you.”

“Shut up, George,” Clay fired back, dropping his fingers to glare at his friend’s image. 

“Make me,” George said, and then, as if as an afterthought, “Clay.”

Once more, Clay’s face flushed fiercely. He tried to smother it with his hands, again, but George was already laughing cheerfully. 

“I guess you held up your end,” George said, “finally.”

“Finally? What does that mean?” Clay shot back. He dropped his hands to his lap, and found George’s phone camera greeting him, rather than George’s face. 

“Hey!” Clay shouted sharply. 

George giggled, pulling his phone away after a click. “What?” He asked innocently.

“I knew you’d do something weird if I showed you my face,” Clay said accusingly. “You’re gonna frame that picture, aren’t you?” 

“I wasn’t,” George said, “but now, maybe.”

“You little loser,” Clay said. His voice was dripping with affection.

George just smiled, and Clay felt compelled to smile back. He felt the corners of his eyes crinkle kindly with it. 

Later, George showed Clay the pictures he’d taken, sheepishly- almost like a dog leading its owner to the dump it’d dropped behind the couch. They were both blurry, low-quality, but not so bad they warranted the virtual trash bin. The first was Clay, caught mid-laugh with his fingers splayed over his eyes and nose, his cheeks painted with a cherry flush. Clay looked at it for a long time, eyes flicking over the sunlight caught like dew in the edges of his bedhead, and his unashamed, bright smile, before looking at the second. 

The second was also him, obviously, but glaring at the camera instead. The edges of a blush were draining from his freckled skin, and his forest green eyes were glowing under furrowed blonde eyebrows. His nose was crinkled, too, rather unattractively, Clay thought. 

_just don't frame them you creep,_ He ended up sending to George, after a minute or two of staring at them in silence.

_no promises._

Clay laughed out loud, shaking his head. He had to put his phone down after that, catching himself up in a dizzy spell, thinking about George liking those crappy, secondhand pictures so much he’d put them in frames. 

Clay told himself, and then he thought about George saying that with a voice lush with fondness, and had to physically walk away then. 

That sunshine through a window feeling in his chest, the warmth and the affection and the honey-sweetness of it, melted down into his bones, simmering like summer underneath his skin. He didn’t feel like a child with puppy dog eyes anymore; he felt like an unnamable, indescribable ache, something grown-up and big and scary, but something comforting in a way, too. 

Almost exactly two and a half months passed to the day Clay had stayed up all night mining diamonds for George. 

Since the unrecorded game of assassin that had ended in a video call that had lasted four hours a week and a half ago, Clay had found himself in many similar calls, many of which tumbled into Clay’s late nights and George’s early mornings. Even on streams, George had taken to calling Clay by his real name rather than Dream. He’d gotten used to it enough to stop jumping and blushing when it happened, but it still sometimes felt like a douse of cold water over his head, after so long of being used to ‘Dream’ from George’s lips. And, the real kicker, George had amped the cheesy flirtatious lines up to a ten. 

Clay’s crush on George had flipped on its head. Where a month ago, hearing George say “I can make your bed-rock” in front of thousands of people would have made Clay absolutely dissolve, he now found he could laugh it through just as well as George did, barely affected save for the first rush of flustered giggles. 

What really made Clay melt into an unsupervised puddle was the simpler things. Like when George laughed at jokes that hadn’t been funny for an hour, half his face smushed into his pillow on Clay’s phone screen, the time spilling into two, three, four hours of just talking. Clay’s productivity dipped into the lowest he’d been for the entire year, barely uploading at all anymore, finding no energy to stream when he could be talking to George. It was easy to ignore the fact that he was showing his own face, too, when he could see how the speckles of almost-gold in George’s chocolate eyes glowed with his smile, how his soft hair bounced when he bent to laugh. 

After one such call, Clay had finally pulled himself together and started a stream that he’d been putting off for a while. The FaceTime spilled into a discord call, but George was clearly full of energy today, so Clay pushed back the solo speedrun stream again and coerced George into speedrunning with him, something he’d been meaning to try for a while. It was ridiculously easy to convince George.Three failed attempts later, both of their determination to beat the dragon melted away from them, and they were laughing through a disastrous Nether that they’d each died in two or three times. 

“Are you glowstone? ‘Cause you light up my world,” George giggled out, as yellow powder rained around Clay, falling with him. His tunnel had dropped into empty space, glowstone flashing brightly around him as he tumbled through it onto the hard Netherrack floor below.

“No! You’ve used that,” Clay scolded, breathy with wheezes. He didn’t even complain as he hit the respawn button, too entranced by George’s bell-like peels of laughter.

“Yeah, with a _torch,_ that’s different,” George said, with a “duh” tone.

Clay shook his head to himself. Purple pulsed around him as he faded into the Nether. Again. “It’s the same punchline,” He argued, still tickled with pinched laughter.

“It’s not a punchline.” George said. A subtle hint of confusion bled into his tone. “It’s just a line.”

“Same thing,” Clay defended. “Be original.”

“I’m _trying-_ ouch - _trying_ to be original. It’s hard!”

“Oh yeah?” Clay scooped all his items up, already down to half a heart by the fall despite the new blocks meant to help him and mowing down a line of bread. George’s character was already on the platform, watching Clay sift through his mussed inventory. “How about this; George, are you my items? Because I’m falling for you.”

But it came out all wrong, so honey-sweet and soft that it was cloying in Clay’s mouth. It sounded too real. It didn’t land right. George didn’t laugh.

Awkward and suddenly anxious, Clay forced a chuckle and said, “S-see? Not that hard to be original.” George still said nothing, so Clay plowed on, valiantly trying to ignore both the entire situation and his racing heart. “Hey, is that the fortress?” He lied, running off in a random direction. 

“That’s a bastion,” George said, sounding almost reluctant, holding emotions in his tone that Clay couldn’t parse. 

“Still useful.” Clay said, and George started following him without saying anything else.

Another week spilled by Clay like ocean waves, pushing away from him and pulling back with a lazy, slow sort of indifference, and he lost track of the days as they went by.

He had stopped holding up his side of the joke entirely. He hadn’t flirted with George since what he has lovingly taken to calling the Incident, finding that the depth of his emotions ran too truely to keep them out of his voice. None of his lines landed right when he said them to himself, soft in the quiet of his room, sweet like the smell of the rosebushes that lined his bedroom window and shy like the night sky, despite how hard he tried to make it sound funny. So he didn’t say them. George must have noticed, because his lines faltered, too, and then faded away entirely. 

Clay also started avoiding George’s video calls, scared of what his face would do if he had to look George in the face while they talked. He answered the normal calls, but if it was a FaceTime or video chat, Clay lied and said later that he’d been busy, after blatantly ignoring George. 

He justified his absence by telling himself that he wanted George’s friendship more than he wanted George’s love, and he couldn’t ask for one without throwing away the other. 

“You can’t be serious.”

Clay scoffed softly, rolling his eyes, face pressed into the warm sleeve of his hoodie. “What?” He asked. “I just haven’t had the time yet.”

“Dream, we did that recording like two weeks ago. You haven’t even started it?” Nick’s voice drifted through Clay’s headphones. He didn’t sound accusatory, but Clay’s shoulders tensed anyways, defensive. 

“No, I told you- I’m- I’m busy.” Clay lied. He hadn’t been busy, just struck with a wave of tiredness. It happened sometimes, but it usually only lasted a few days before he felt normal again. This had been a bit longer.

“Do you want me to edit it, Clay?” George’s voice surprised Clay. He sat up, staring at the screen. He’d actually forgotten George was in the call, the other man had been so quiet. “I have the time.” George sounded unusually hesitant, soft-voiced.

“Why is he Clay and I’m Sapnap?” Nick blurted, after a couple moments where Clay had said nothing.

The softness drained from George’s tone, replaced with faint annoyance as he said, “What? We’ve always called you Sapnap.”

“Yeah, and we’ve always called him Dream.” 

“Do you want me to call you Nick? Is that what you’re asking for? I don’t know what you want.” 

“I don’t care, dude, I’m just wondering what changed between you two.”

Clay’s shoulders hitched up, and he snapped, “Nothing changed.” before either of them could say anything else. Maybe too quickly, if their silence was anything to judge by. 

After a long, awkward moment, Nick said, “Uh-huh. Well. I’m gonna go, I have stuff to do today. See you guys later.”

Regret started to seep in as Clay realized how weird he sounded. A little sigh escaped him, and he hovered his mouse over the button to leave the call after Nick left. “I think I’ll head out, too.” He said.

“Wait,” George said, and despite his instincts, Clay did. “Can we.. talk?”

“About what? Sapnap’s just being weird like he always is. It doesn’t matter.” Clay said, dismissive, more than ready to ignore the entire situation for forever. 

“Not about him,” George said. “About us.” He sounded all soft and quiet again.

Clay’s skin prickled with unease, and he instinctively rubbed the back of his neck, nervous all over suddenly. He had never been good at communicating like George was. “Us?” He asked, doubtful. The very idea of talking about things made him want to bolt.

“Like, you know,” George said uselessly. He continued, sounding more confident as he spoke, “We’ve been weird, I guess. Since that speedrun stream.”

 _Oh shit._ Clay thought. Dread twisted his stomach. He felt mostly blind panic rising in him, and nothing else. This was the part, he realized, where George said ‘your little crush on me is gross and weird. Please stop, and never talk to me again, ok byeee’. Well, probably not like that, but more or less along the lines of that, Clay figured.

When Clay said absolutely nothing, George said, hesitant, “Why did you stop flirting with me?”

Which was not what Clay had been expecting at all. A little disbelieving laugh fluttered out of Clay’s chest. “What do you mean? The bit had to end sometime. It was going on for a while.”

“Bit?” George parroted.

“Yeah. It was lasting for like, two months.” Clay’s default setting, he had realized a while ago, to this kind of situation was always the same: laugh. He’d learned early on to laugh before others laughed at you, and eventually that habit had morphed into ‘just constantly laugh’, because they couldn’t cut you to the chase if you were always there, right? The easiest solution to his current problem seemed to be to pretend he’d been joking, the easy banter that George had been doing the whole time, that Clay went and messed up with actual feelings.

“You said, a while ago, you said the flirting- you said ‘punchline’.” 

Clay’s head shook faintly, a subtle movement of confusion, though he didn’t disagree with what George was saying. “Yeah, I did.”

George asked, “It was a joke to you?” and Clay could only blink, brain wiped clean.

“ _What_?” He managed to say, wrenched out of him, absolutely uncomprehending.

“I wasn’t joking.” George said, dead serious, and Clay went quiet again.

Finally, nervous laughter escaped him. “What the fuck is happening? You’re messing with me?” The end of Clay’s statement lilted up into a question, hopelessly lost in this conversation. 

George went quiet for a second, and then he said, “I meant it. Well, I meant- most of it. Some of them were jokes. Were you joking the whole time? Did I read this wrong?”

With a sudden passion, Clay hated this. He hated how unsure they both sounded, he hated how nervous and scared he felt, and he hated how apparently he’d been so blind for so long. “I’m like, super in love with you,” He blurted, cutting the drama and diving in. Cards on the table. “I thought you were joking, so I pretended I was joking, but then I felt- well, I couldn’t hide it anymore, and I got scared, so I stopped flirting.”

When George talked again, after another quiet, still moment, Clay could hear the smile in his voice. “And you also started avoiding my calls because you were scared?”

Clay’s bitten-down fingertips drummed on his desk. “Yes,” He said honestly. “But only the video calls, I answered the other ones.”

“You know I think it’s super cute when you blush? That’s why I took those pictures, when we first called.”

“I don’t even blush that much!” Clay whined, dropping his face into his hands. “I refuse for that to be what I’m known for.”

George laughed, easy and light, and the rest of the lingering tension in Clay’s chest melted away. “Okay, well, I’m telling you that I wasn’t joking and that you don’t need to be scared, so don’t run away anymore, okay?”

Clay buried his nose into his arms again, mumbling, “Okay,” through a smile that wouldn’t fade. The warmth deep in his bones felt like it was threatening to melt him into a sticky puddle of affection and heart-eyes.

“And also…” George’s voice trailed off, the confidence dripping away. “I also- I do, too.”

Blonde eyebrows furrowed, and Clay tilted his head up at the screen, looking at the green circle around George’s pfp light up and fade away. “What?” He asked. 

“I do- fuck. I love you too,” George blurted, words falling over each other like dominoes. 

“Okay,” Clay said again, agreeably. “But you don’t have to tell me that if you don’t want to.”

“I _do,_ it’s just hard. I’ll get better.” George muttered, sullen. Clay smiled again, and his mouse drifted over to the button that would change the call into a video chat, since he had no reason to hide anymore. 

“You’re fine. Hey, George?”

George’s face filled the screen, familiar and unfamiliar with this whole new context of how Clay knew him. “Yeah?” George asked.

Clay smiled a little shit-eating grin, though it was edged with genuine affection like the soft seafoam that crests ocean waves, and said, “If I had a diamond for every time you made me smile, I’d be the richest Minecraft alive.” 

“You’re so stupid, oh my God,” George said, burying a smile into his palms. Clay sighed softly, tipping his cheek into one hand and watching George, his heart stuttering in its bed of honey and gold, all soft and warm thanks to that sunshine through a window feeling in his chest.


End file.
